hello all, is intel x58 still the best, as i can get a cheap 990x (£300) to upgrade my i7. any thoughts welcome many thanks xxxsonic
Essentially no not really, although a 990x is an amazing chip, i5 2500k and i7 2600k/2700k beat or draw level with the 990x at most things apart from heavily multi threaded applications, so if thats what your using your pc for then the 990x might be a good idea, if not I'd say change to sandy bridge setup, but also Remember Sandy Bridge-E or lga 2011 is roughly two weeks away and should be pretty darn good
Yeah don't put £300 into an aging platform. I spent £300ish on a 6-core/12-thread CPU for my system and whilst it is nice, it really doesn't make any difference at all unless you are doing something that requires the extra threads or if you do DICE/LN2 benching and would appreciate the unlocked multi etc. I benched the royal fook out of my 970 and then sold it on a few days later.
x58 is a great platform.. IF you have it already. Sandy Bridge is just a bit faster... it's more efficient then anything else. But buying x58 now, is silly.
Agreed with above. The I7920 is very capable, and unless you need the serious performance, don't bother. Why are you upgrading, then, may I ask? Or just asking because you had an opportunity to get a cheap 990x ? Which is fair enough
If you can afford an i7 990X, then waiting a couple of weeks and getting a 3930K (or evn 3960X if your budget is high enough!) will get you a better performance. Performancewise, 3930K is scaled against 980X and 3960X is scaled against 990X, and the SB-E will perform better at most tasks. Both are already available for pre-order in the USA, although the cheaper, multiplier locked processor appears to have been delayed (not sure why the worse performing chip is delayed and the extreme chips are on schedule!).
mate go for it its a good long term upgrade for your system, as long as you haven't got the upgrade bug is will do you for a good few years (this only applies if you have a 1366 i7 system)
No, just no. How is it a good upgrade? On a gaming machine it'll make little or not difference having those extra cores. Just overclock the 920, it'll get to a similar point that the 990X would on air cooling.
Yeh he should definitel OC his 920 to 4GHz. I had my 970 @ 4.5GHz HTon / 4.6GHz HT off and really didn't notice much difference at all - yes it was nice, but not "worth £300" nice.
The 920 is a doddle to get running at 4GHz on air, that would be my recommendation too. I may actually have to think about sticking mine back up, Comp's starting to feel sluggish...
Hell at that price I still would take if I was you but that os if you have the mobo and everything else that goes with a1366. Sent from my GT-I9000
At that price if your not planning an upgrade for another couple of years then grab hold of it, I can't see programing or games moving on so far in the next few years that it wouldn't be able to cope with anything thats throw at it.
As far as upgrades go, IMO he'd be much better spending £300 on a new GPU and an SSD, or a nice monitor. CPU upgrades should be FAR down the list if you already have a hyperthreaded quad...
